| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183] > | Should “native language” claims be verified? Thread poster: XXXphxxx (X)
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| We are all ears :-) | Jul 2, 2012 |
Catherine GUILLIAUMET wrote:
a) Who will implement this decree?
b) How will this decree be implemented?
c) How much shall we have to pay for this new "service"?
I realise the main focus of the thread has been arguing the toss over what "native" means, but those other questions have also been discussed.... with no definite conclusion reached, which means any suggestions you've got will no doubt be welcome.
Well, I say that. Obviously, this place being what it is, I suspect that:
a) no matter what you say or how valid it is, people will focus on the easy thing to discuss, i.e. more and more pointless blather about what, precisely and universally, native means, such that Joesph Conrad either does or doesn't get a "N", or illiterates (!) likewise, as new people join the thread and recycle the same arguments expressed by those who dropped out 15 pages ago (and to think that the OP initially argued against reviving any old threads on the grounds of length! )
b) any suggestion has to:
i) not take up any more staff time
ii) not require any more than 10 minutes programming time
because otherwise the site is likely to laugh in our collective face. Or faces.
Personally, I think perhaps it would be useful to take a step back and consider the underlying purpose of the profile, and what, and indeed who, it is for and about, exactly. Who, or what, is the "N" (and indeed anything else on there) actually describing?
| | | | Michele Fauble 
United States
Local time: 02:50
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
| Educated native speaker | Jul 2, 2012 |
Kirsten Bodart wrote:
did + past simple of verb, I would not call a non-native error, it's a grammar mistake.
A grammar mistake that is made because the non-native speaker has not acquired the native structure is a non-native error.
Michele Fauble wrote:
It would not be a non-native error in any case since spelling and punctuation are not part of what makes one a native speaker.
Kirsten Bodart wrote:
I don't agree with that.
People were native speakers of their native language before writing existed. Illiterates are native speakers of their native language. Children are native speakers of their native language before starting school. People who spell badly and do not punctuate correctly are native speakers of their native language. Learning to spell and punctuate correctly and learning to write well make you an EDUCATED native speaker.
[Edited at 2012-07-02 21:11 GMT]
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I got in a taxi last Saturday afternoon. I sat in the front, and we got stuck in traffic. We struck up a chat about football, Italy/Spain, exchanged our expert opinions. I asked him what his Muttersprache was. He said Turkish.
I believed him.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:50
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| @Michele -- weren't we discussing interference? | Jul 2, 2012 |
Michele Fauble wrote:
People who spell badly and do not punctuate correctly are native speakers of their native language. Learning to spell and punctuate correctly and learning to write well make you an EDUCATED native speaker.
All true. But the original issue with punctuation that started this sub-thread was specifically that of first-language versus second-language interference, which is not what your quote above is about anymore.
In other words, if you're a native speaker of X who can read and write, then you are not unlikely to use elements of X when you write Y. And if you claim to be a native speaker of Y but your writing contains elements of X, then there may be grounds to doubt your claim.
And then an interesting question is: if you claim to be a native speaker of both X and Y but your writing in Y contains elements of X that are foreign to Y, would that be something that is normal for people with two native languages, or would that be reason to doubt your claim as well?
[Edited at 2012-07-02 22:33 GMT]
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| What about British English, American English, Brooklyn English | Jul 2, 2012 |
Have you ever thought that for many American companies British English might not be considered native? For book translations, especially, native British English might not do, for American publishing houses, and many other companies. What about Irish people, Australian. I am not even mentioning people who speak certain varieties of British and American English because they just love them -- Cockney, Hip Hop slang, etc. Some American born people have even problem understanding British English whe... See more Have you ever thought that for many American companies British English might not be considered native? For book translations, especially, native British English might not do, for American publishing houses, and many other companies. What about Irish people, Australian. I am not even mentioning people who speak certain varieties of British and American English because they just love them -- Cockney, Hip Hop slang, etc. Some American born people have even problem understanding British English when the news reporter speaks too fast.
[Edited at 2012-07-02 22:04 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 11:50
French to English
| did you went etc | Jul 2, 2012 |
Kirsten Bodart wrote: but please don't hesitate about the knit-picking. It is weird that the South-African is the only one here who is doing this... Michele Fauble wrote:
They often are, but need not be. There are quite a few non-native errors in English that are found in the speech/writing of non-native English speakers from a variety of native language backgrounds. A real example:
past tense of did + past tense of main verb, e.g. "did you went?"
A native English speaker does not need to know the native language of the speaker to know that this is a non-native error. did + past simple of verb, I would not call a non-native error, it's a grammar mistake. You learn this when you learn the past simple and how to ask a question using it or putting it in the negative. The wrong use of tenses is also a grammar problem. The same goes for the use of 'a' and 'an'. Now, there is discussion about the use of the indefinite article before h (do we stay with the 18th century Latinists or not, and I heard one recently on the BBC), but other than that, the rule is clear cut and simple. A non-native mistake would be the over-use of indefinite articles, for example. Dutch and German are prone to that, because these languages use nouns in their singular with a definite article for generalisations and not the plural without article at all, like English. Another non-native mistake is using wrong prepositions. You are going to laugh, but I saw a discussion on the Literature Network a while ago by someone who had seen the two phrases 'Did you used to like...' and 'Did you use to like...' in an English grammar book (!). Both of them were right, allegedly. This was being taught to students. We were all wondering where the world was coming to. Are they now going to teach people faulty grammar? Michele Fauble wrote:
It would not be a non-native error in any case since spelling and punctuation are not part of what makes one a native speaker. I don't agree with that. Spelling maybe not, but certain languages do have special puncuation, and it doesn't even need to be because of pauses or not. Admittedly, it is not specifically taught, but I imagine bad non-native German-English translators putting commas everywhere where they shouldn't be. German is a jungle of commas in some cases. Every clause gets a comma to mark its existence. While in English there is a difference between: 'The cat, which sat on the mat.' and 'The cat which sat on the mat.' in German it will always be, 'Die Katze, die auf dem Teppich sass,' (sorry no hard s on my computer), even if you don't pause at the comma because the meaning of the sentence is similar to the second English option above. I think the natives here who are arguing for the native tag to be of some meaning maybe just wish the rules of their languages to be respected. I can go along with that. At least write a grammatically correct text that does not have millions of contextual mistakes in it. Although I keep repeating that that is possible for a non-native, in some cases and some fields. [Edited at 2012-07-02 17:44 GMT]
You're quite right Kirsten, the "natives" don't like their language being messed up by foreigners. We prefer to mess it up ourselves! (and please call us "native speakers" because some might find it offensive to be called "natives"!)
Nit-picking over your comments now by a bona fide native English speaker  : I'm sorry but even if "did you went" may be classified as a grammar error, it is typically a *non-native* grammar error. Only a very young native speaker would make that mistake, just like small French children might say "les chevals".
And the use of tenses: well I taught English for over ten years, I was not a bad teacher but I never managed to get any French students to understand when to say "I have been" rather than "I went" (not to mention that "I have gone" is linguistically impossible). I never even learned the name of any tenses beyond Scrooge level in order to speak English correctly. Native English speakers can just feel whether to say "it rained all day" or "it's been raining all day", so somebody who makes that kind of grammar mistake is very typically a non-native.
"J'ai manger" is a typical native mistake in French and I expect that foreigners make it too. But the French would never put "j'ai manger la chou fleur" whereas a non-native could very well do so (well of course, flowers are feminine aren't they!).
And Michele, I agree with your comment about spelling. My son (who learned English speaking and reading with me then as a foreign language at a French school) came home upset one day because the teacher had exclaimed "you can't be English, you make too many spelling mistakes" (as if it were in our genes?). I just told him to ignore her, because applying such logic would wipe out the vast majority of French nationals.
| | | | Michele Fauble
United States
Local time: 02:50
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
Samuel Murray wrote: Michele Fauble wrote:
People who spell badly and do not punctuate correctly are native speakers of their native language. Learning to spell and punctuate correctly and learning to write well make you an EDUCATED native speaker. All true. But the original issue with punctuation that started this sub-thread was specifically that of first-language versus second-language interference, which is not what your quote above is about anymore. In other words, if you're a native speaker of X who can read and write, then you are not unlikely to use elements of X when you write Y. And if you claim to be a native speaker of Y but your writing contains elements of X, then there may be grounds to doubt your claim. And then an interesting question is: if you claim to be a native speaker of both X and Y but your writing in Y contains elements of X that are foreign to Y, would that be something that is normal for people with two native languages, or would that be reason to doubt your claim as well?
If the writing contains non-native linguistic errors, we can say that the writer is not a native speaker. If the writing contains punctuation errors, due to native language interference or otherwise, we can say that the writer needs to learn correct punctuation
(something one does not automatically know simply by virtue of being a native speaker).
While punctuation errors due to native language interference are an indicator, they are not part of the definition of native language.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 17:50
Chinese to English
| Yeah, we got sucked back in, so... | Jul 3, 2012 |
Time for me to remind myself that it's not at this point worth debating the toss with the few people who are determined to reject the concept of nativeness.
Given the somewhat gloomy summary I posted yesterday, I have one response for Charlie - you said "why would it take the pressure off the Proz staff" to make native verification a paid for service? The answer is because they can hire more people if it's paid for. This might make it prohibitively expensive, and thus a pointless m... See more Time for me to remind myself that it's not at this point worth debating the toss with the few people who are determined to reject the concept of nativeness.
Given the somewhat gloomy summary I posted yesterday, I have one response for Charlie - you said "why would it take the pressure off the Proz staff" to make native verification a paid for service? The answer is because they can hire more people if it's paid for. This might make it prohibitively expensive, and thus a pointless measure.
I'm starting to think that there might be no effective way of clearing out the existing set of misrepresenters.
(aside to Bernhard - I think your group (A) of honestly mistaken users is very small, and in any case, not the problem)
But to reduce the problem among new members, I did very much like Samuel's scale:
http://www.proz.com/forum/prozcom_suggestions/227680-add_degree_of_nativeness_to_the_native_language_search.html
I don't accept this "degree" concept, but if you put in place a cut-off, and said anyone scoring 7+ gets "native", anyone below doesn't, that might well reduce the level of misrepresentation. So I mean removing the option to "declare" your native language, and having new members answer this series of questions instead for each of their languages.
In theory this could be phased in for all members over time. ▲ Collapse
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Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Hebrew to English
| Native but wrong variety - localization | Jul 3, 2012 |
LilianBoland wrote:
Have you ever thought that for many American companies British English might not be considered native? For book translations, especially, native British English might not do, for American publishing houses, and many other companies. What about Irish people, Australian. I am not even mentioning people who speak certain varieties of British and American English because they just love them -- Cockney, Hip Hop slang, etc. Some American born people have even problem understanding British English when the news reporter speaks too fast.
[Edited at 2012-07-02 22:04 GMT]
It's not that they are considered "not native", they are just the wrong native version for the target audience.
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Here we go again | Jul 3, 2012 |
LilianBoland wrote:
You cannot claim Bernard that all linguists, including the people working on the Wikipedia are wrong, and you are right, with your conservative, outdated definition of a native language. There are many children in the United States, or teenagers rather, who came here at the age of 9-10. Many of them cannot write in their L1, some don't even speak their L1 well at the age of fifteen, yet many speak English at a level comparable to the level of the children who were born here. What would you say about that? Secondly nobody will tell anyone what their native language is. They may tell the person if they are satisfied with their translation or not: this is about it. I agree that all of the above applies more to such languages as English, Spanish, French, perhaps, but especially English since it the the unofficial Lingua Franca of the 21st century. May people can speak it quite well because of the overwhelming input ( TV, movies, music, articles, books, blogs, etc.) The aristocracy of the 19th century would often declare French as their native language, no matter how well they spoke it, rathe than the language of the country where they lived. The above may not apply to the same extent to other, more rare languages. I agree that it is really unusual to meet a translator who did not grow up in Russia, and whose parents were not Russian- speaking and he or she could translate successfully into that language. It would take probably 20 years of living in Russia, university education, and reading an enormous number of books in that language to become a good translator into that language. I think this is true probably about many other languages.
The argument that has perhaps not yet reared its head in this thread but has certainly appeared in others - English can be spoken to native standard because it's easy.
Well Lilian, not to put too fine a point on it, there seems little use in countering or taking that argument any further since it has been proved over and over, by several of your postings in this thread, that your definition of what constitutes a native English speaker is somewhat far removed from what the rest of us would agree with.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:50
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Interesting interpretation of Lilian's post | Jul 3, 2012 |
Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote: LilianBoland wrote:
English [is] ... the the unofficial Lingua Franca of the 21st century. May people can speak it quite well because of the overwhelming input ( TV, movies, music, articles, books, blogs, etc.)
The aristocracy of the 19th century would often declare French as their native language, no matter how well they spoke it, rather than the language of the country where they lived. The argument that has perhaps not yet reared its head in this thread but has certainly appeared in others, [namely that] English can be spoken to native standard because it's easy.
Wow, I would have thought that that was what Lilian was trying to say. The way I interpreted her post is not that English is easy but that the world is saturated with it. Most of us here agree that one of the elements of a native language is continued exposure to it (particularly when we are young), and Lilian's point (if I understand correctly) is that the degree of exposure to English for non-English people is often much higher than the degree of exposure to non-English is for English people.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Hebrew to English
| English saturation is overestimated | Jul 3, 2012 |
I'm sorry but before we go down that avenue.... there's a big difference between living in a country with a few starbucks and (usually badly written) English slogans on buses whilst all the time being surrounded by another language and actually living in an English speaking country. Exposure is one thing, quality of exposure is another.
I just want to dispel any belief that someone can call themselves a native speaker just because they've been bombarded with English advertising most their ... See more I'm sorry but before we go down that avenue.... there's a big difference between living in a country with a few starbucks and (usually badly written) English slogans on buses whilst all the time being surrounded by another language and actually living in an English speaking country. Exposure is one thing, quality of exposure is another.
I just want to dispel any belief that someone can call themselves a native speaker just because they've been bombarded with English advertising most their lives....most of which probably doesn't constitute comprehensible input (so linguistically speaking: it goes in one ear and out the other). ▲ Collapse
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Samuel Murray wrote:
and Lilian's point (if I understand correctly) is that the degree of exposure to English for non-English people is often much higher than the degree of exposure to non-English is for English people.
It still doesn´t make anyone become a native speaker. You (a general "you") may have it easier to learn English and be passively proficient at it, but you cannot learn to be a native speaker. Either you are or you are not, it is that simple. The problem comes (apart from the ones who deliberately lie) when people overestimate themselves and think that their English (or any other language) is at native level when in fact they are far far far far away from that.
They are not native speakers. Why is it so hard to accept the truth? There is nothing wrong with not being a native speaker. You still can have ressources and enough proficiency that enable you to offer translations to English if you want, nobody is arguing against that. But you should respect what the clients are looking for. And if they are looking for native speakers that´s what they should get. Besides, not all clients are unaware and they usually know very well why they are precisely looking for native speakers. You find here reasons for that every single day...
[Edited at 2012-07-03 16:17 GMT]
| | | | BeaDeer (X)
English to Slovenian
+ ...
| @Lilian - I wasn't, until now. But ... | Jul 3, 2012 |
LilianBoland wrote:
Hi, were you not aware, Bea, that there are many jobs on which non-native speakers cannot bid, because they are restricted. This is basically what I was referring to, no matter whether anyone else had mentioned it before, or not. I think this is the reason some might stretch their native language definition because they feel they could do the jobs but they cannot bid on them.
I wasn't aware of this until you pointed it out. I see that it should have been obvious, yes. My main reason for being a paying member is to be able to access the BB (also a topic for discussion).
The "honestly wrong" group A (Bernard's post, page 36). Living in another country for several years does not make a person a native speaker; even if no one can guess you're a foreigner when you speak, it would certainly show in your writing. Being honestly in the dark about who you are and what your skills are, on a portal for professional translators, is in my opinion just as undesirable as being "not so honestly wrong". It is all right to be proud of your new language, your ability to speak it without an accent, but advertising oneself as a native speaker? Such behaviour goes against the concept of a professional community. It diminishes the reputation of the portal and hurts the credibility of other translators, those who are not in any way in the dark about who they are, what are their skills and what upholding professional standards means.
As Bernard said, "the first group would need to be educated". The second one likewise. Proz should put in place a mechanism that will encourage professional conduct and contribute positively to the image of the site. This is associated with costs, but I do not see any other way. Non-natives are not necessarily incompetent translators into their second or third language, in their chosen fields. Some are very good, even excellent, but I have never seen any of these translators to not be aware of their personal limitations in these languages (they are even more aware of them). I have also never seen these professional translators lie about their native language in order to get an assignment.
[Edited at 2012-07-03 08:51 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-03 08:54 GMT]
[Edited at 2012-07-03 19:18 GMT]
| | | | XXXphxxx (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:50
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | You may be right Samuel | Jul 3, 2012 |
I find it very difficult to understand Lilian sometimes, but it was this bit that led me to think the general gist was that English was easy, much along the same lines as Kerstin's "English has no rules" argument:
[quote]
I agree that it is really unusual to meet a translator who did not grow up in Russia, and whose parents were not Russian- speaking and he or she could translate successfully into that language. It would take probably 20 years of living in Russia, university education, and reading an enormous number of books in that language to become a good translator into that language. I think this is true probably about many other languages.
[/unquote]
All of which is still completely off-topic and has nothing to do with people lying about their native languages, credentials, you name it. I have received PMs and emails from some 20 or 30 people now as a result of this thread, a fair number of them haven't contributed to the discussion as they are unable to. I've been sent links to other threads, to linguistics websites; I've seen threads taking place on other sites discussing this very thread; I have also been sent links to various profiles where false claims are being made. I can tell you that the level of deceipt, dishonesty and fabrication on these profiles is beyond your wildest imaginings. Rather than focusing on others' scams and having a dedicated forum for it, we should be examining the number taking place that use this very site as a vehicle. Would ProZ be your first port of call if you were an outsourcer?
[Edited at 2012-07-03 11:56 GMT]
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